In this project I will analyze the activities of the Public Health Service in the late 1920s and the ambitions of its leaders as to the Service's future role, especially as embodied in the Parker bill, which reorganized the Service, and the Ransdell bill, which created the National Institute of Health. I will seek to understand the mixture of conflict and cooperation between supporters of the Parker bill, particularly Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming, and advocates of the competing Ransdell bill, led principally by Dr. Charles Holmes Herty. I will trace the legislative history of these bills, both of which became law in 1930. I will then study the setting up of the National Institute of Health and its early activities, ending with the establishment of the National Cancer Institute in 1937. Principal primary sources for this study are PHS and Bureau of the Budget documents in the National Archives; Library of Congress documents on the legislative history of the bills; the National Library of Medicine collection; the Smithsonian Institution Archives; the Charles Holmes Herty papers at Emory University; the Hugh S. Cumming papers at the University of Virginia; PHS annual reports and publications; and interviews with Dr. Sanford M. Rosenthal and Dr. Henry Sebrell, surviving scientists of this period. Long range objectives of the study are: 1) to examine the history of the Public Health Service in a significant transition period and 2) to study public and private sector interactions during years when chemotherapy was a hope without as yet much substance.